The company blog

SMS is still the favourite platform for UK mobile users

Despite smartphones revolutionising the mobile industry, new research has found that the traditional text message is still the king of mobile communication.

A new study published by Acision, the mobile communications company, has revealed the role that SMS messages play in everyday life for UK consumers.

After surveying 1,000 mobile users in the UK, 63% of which were smartphone users, research proved that SMS is still indispensable.

Results from the survey found that up to 95% of the participants stated that they actively use SMS. Even more interestingly, 93% of Brits who own a smartphone admit to regularly communicating via SMS, despite having Instant Messaging (IM) services on their handset.

Further data showed that 51% of Smartphone users said they would be “lost without” an SMS facility.

“Reports that suggest that SMS is on its deathbed, it seems, have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, it appears that smartphone and feature phone owners alike are united by their affection for text messaging,” commented Jorgen Nilsson, Chief Executive at Acision.

Converging platforms

Interestingly, research reveals that far from being in competition, SMS and IM services are actually complementing each other.

Nilsson stressed that what is particularly interesting is that SMS seems to excel on devices that have been more commonly associated with IM services.

“After looking at these results it is clear that while IM is growing in popularity, it still has a long way to go to catch up with the reach, reliability and ubiquitous nature of SMS. Analysts are predicting that Mobile IM will exceed 1.3 billion users by 2016, compared to over 5 billion users with access to SMS today,” concluded Nilsson.

While IM is useful to communicate with people in an everyday environment such as family or friends, SMS is the best tool when looking for a more formal way of communication. This is why business SMS is a great service that provides fast and effective communication by keeping a respectful distance from the user at the same time.

Specsavers improve customer service with SMS reminders

We’ve just won a contract worth more than quarter of a million pounds to provide text messaging services for Specsavers, the UK’s largest high-street optician.
We won the contract against strong competition from across the industry.

The three-year deal will see us sending millions of text messages to Specsavers customers with details of their appointments.

Geoff Love, Chief Commercial Officer for Esendex, said: “We are delighted that such a large and respected company has chosen Esendex to manage a vital part of its operations.

“Specsavers is famous for the quality of its customer care. We went through an understandably rigorous selection process before being awarded the contract and so to be chosen as their SMS partner reaffirms our position as market leaders.”

He said the deal meant Esendex was entering into a partnership with Specsavers and the two companies would be working closely to see how texting technology could help Specsavers to provide even better customer service and to further grow its business.

“Appointment reminders are the starting point”, said Love, “but texting can also be used in marketing to generate appointments in the first place and to follow them up afterwards.

Specsavers is the largest optical retailer in the UK and Ireland. It handles more than seven million appointments a year.

It has been voted the most trusted brand in the UK for the last ten years by Readers Digest.

Sarah Koulloutas, Head of Direct Marketing for Specsavers said: “Customer service is extremely important to us and something that we’re always looking to improve.

“We are confident that working with Esendex will help us to offer an even better service.”

Social apps “harvesting data” – what’s this all about?

Twitter has recently admitted to copying the entire address books from smartphones and storing the data on their servers, without customers’ knowledge.

Access to the address book is enabled when users click on the “Find Friends” feature on smartphones apps.

Twitter spokesman Carolyn Penner said it would now offer users the option to “upload your address book” or “import your contacts” to make it clearer.

She said: “We want to be clear and transparent in our communications with users. Along those lines, in our next app updates, which are coming soon, we are updating the language associated with Find Friends – to be more explicit.”

Alongside Twitter being in the news recently, there has also been talk of Android apps handling personal data to advertisers.

On Sunday Channel 4 News uncovered how easy it is for apps on Android phones to share and access data. The Channel 4 News research was undertaken by UK security company MWR InfoSecurity.

“We found that a lot of the free applications in the top 50 apps list are using advertising inside the applications, and that the permission that you grant to these applications is also granted to the advertiser,” a representative of MWR InfoSecurity told Channel 4 News.

“If users knew about this, I think they would be concerned about it. But at the moment I don’t think they are aware of the situation and how widely their information can be used.”

These kinds of practices by giants such as Twitter and Google raises questions and concerns about the privacy implications posed by other websites and apps.

At Esendex we have taken the relevant steps to protect our customers’ privacy. We never disclose your details to any third party for marketing purposes. We also employ security measures to protect your information from access by unauthorised persons and against unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction and damage.

If you would like more information on data privacy please get in touch – info@esendex.co.uk